i mean family and friends and i believe that i'm still really messed up. in the old very slow motion the. worst you're going through the white house or the. radio guy and. i want. to give you never seen anything like this until. you got it and how the mind and the strange thing is set i'm sure you've heard by now but the massive explosion that nearly flatten the small town of west texas the blast was the result of a fire at a fertilizer plant killing dozens of people and injuring over one hundred sixty others and then firefighters rushed to put out the flames or were unable to stop the fire from reaching containers holding dangerous chemicals what followed was a massive explosion that sincerely damaged over fifty homes hardened buildings

cools and nursing homes for many of you by the tragedies this week just so you know there is no factual basis that indicates this blast was intentional today a search is underway for survivors and missing persons in the debris as many as fifteen people are still unaccounted for among them firefighters and first responders i'll continue to watch this story and report on any developments and told them my heart goes out to all those affected by the disaster for now it's fair to say that. venezuela's highly anticipated elections were held this past sunday in the closest vote the country's seen in forty years nicolas maduro political era the late president hugo chavez was proclaimed president after an aggressive season of campaigning with a close margin as probably the opposition party every day complete is to call for peaceful street. a recount of the vote and now in

a tragic development seven deaths have been reported in relation to the protests. in the opposition of violence and of course the u.s. government is now out in their two cents secretary of state john kerry told reporters that quote there ought to be a recount obviously there are huge irregularities we're going to have a serious question about the viability of that government ironic that kerry would take this line considering how less than a year ago international observers including the electoral oversight team led by former u.s. president jimmy carter called venezuela's electoral process quote the best in the world so to help me break down exactly what's going on in venezuela on the ground r.t. correspondent. who's in caracas now. what is the state of the protests right now and are they still going on is there any more information about the violence that took place and who did cause those. well you know i think post-election with such a narrow margin emotions were really running high so you had. supporters out on the

streets you speak to people and they're very emotional about the results of the elections as far as the protests are concerned we saw violent ones in the two days that followed after the announcement on april fourteenth that result and the government says yes indeed seven people had died and they were blaming. the opposition which could be to set any violence that you see on the streets actually is the government is behind this or the two men and of course through we accusations to each other we saw that during during the campaign and us about security has been stepped up but now the inauguration is coming. their dignitaries who are coming into town so there may be people who would like to go out and show their support for my little but came out on television in a press conference and called on his supporters to actually just stay home but if they're going to hold any protests it will be by banging pots and pans that he said because he said he wants to prove that his supporters are actually peaceful let me just tell you to for do you know. according to the government there are about fifty . in countries that they will be they will be sending high level dignitaries the

u.s. of course will not be sending anyone to this countries that will be doing so include . iran china qatar saudi arabia argentina we already see security being stepped up in the country so right now where i'm standing it's a bit calm but we have to wait till the inauguration day and see what goes on. as opposition party have been calling for a recount but i actually read in the reports that a manual recount actually isn't even technically possible can you talk about this issue. because that's the main demand of the opposition they want to manual recount now there was talk spoke to some of the observers some of those involved closely with the election there were talk of possibly a recount but now the chief of the supreme court had come out and said that's actually not possible she said those who had believed that a manual recount would be possible were deceived she said because the electoral system here in venezuela is completely automated and she also said that manual

voting had been cancelled in the country because of the one nine hundred ninety nine constitution and so she said this is clearly not possible if the opposition wants to pursue this line that they are staunchly standing firm on she said we have to find all the legal channels so for now it's the commission electoral commission that also said what they had declared but little being president is also final so no vote. and of course the u.s. is being very vocal about not recognizing president nicolas maduro his government why is it that the u.s. is even involved in this situation especially since a former u.s. president has actually come out and said that venezuela's electoral process is quote the best in the world. well that is actually very interesting the state department and u.s. secretary of state john kerry has been questioned by journalism american journalists on why the u.s. is doing so so far what he said about whether or not the u.s. will recognize the results of this vote he said that i cannot give a yes or no answer to that and you know. no that the previous days they have been

calling for a vote recount and interestingly enough you know when my daughter was the former foreign minister under this she had been talking to the state department was sort of a back door in relations between the two countries but venezuela had taken offense at some of the comments of the us had made and now because of these comments on the electoral electoral system that is well it did take offense again so clearly taking on his post as new president it's starting off not in a very very good footing with the united states and there seems to be a lot of talk of the situation arising into a larger political crisis i mean if nothing else the protests and all of the strife in the country shows that the nation's very heavily divided right now could this. is as a successor to the chavez is may not be able to unite the country such as chavez did. i think that's a very big problem for him indeed the nation is split almost fifty fifty so he's starting to starting off his presidency with a very weak mandate and i think because the opposition cannot pursue this. recount

i think they'll be watching very closely for the mistakes that will be making in his presidency and they will probably be using this to protest and possibly show more of their opposition but also i've been speaking to supporters you know clearly they say is not obvious he does not have the charisma to ask this fears and concerns about security which is number one in this country a concern of the people so also supporters of my who are watching him closely because he has a very short grace period now they want to see how well the president he is it's time to show himself as president he is not they want to know who is nicolas maduro . was in fact one could argue that he won simply because of the endorsement by chavez but with chavez out of the picture the question has been raised how can continue in the region i mean people enough to continue this movement and what will happen if he isn't well you know he did run a campaign on this continuation continuing the show. it's revolution the ball the

very end revolution in the name of will go chavez and indeed it will be very difficult for him to moving forward to make sure that everybody is on the same page giving him his support and one thing that's very important to note here is that this was a military man and you know that in venezuela you need military support the government needs that support to move forward peacefully and keep this country stable and we can't answer the question on how it's going to how this will continue under my little because he has a lot of things to prove both from his government from the military and from the people. well thank you so much for bringing us that on the ground coverage it'll be very important to see how the situation unfold and how it's going to reflect the rest of the world should it. well guys i always ask you to write me and let me know what you think about the show and it's about time to respond to some of your comments starting with my segment on the corporate media is disaster porn the coverage of boston wisdom seeker seventy nine on you tube says abby martin equals

think but don't think too hard hey wisdom seeker first of all maybe don't put the fact that you're seeking was the material is because if you really cared about truth pursuits then you wouldn't be accusing me of telling people to not look at all angles false flags are very real thing that i have acknowledged many times on the show but since so many of you don't seem to get why it's counterproductive to shout from the rooftops that every disaster is a false flag and its immediate wake let me explain we don't know any concrete information this is not to say that we should mindlessly lap up the information when it is presented to us by the government no question everything but don't prematurely inject these unfounded assertions into the public sphere all that does is poison the well and makes a mockery of those asking legitimate questions moving on to you to kook detector who states exxon should certainly have to pay for the damage they caused in arkansas or anywhere else but you said the pipeline was old so you're in favor of newer better pipelines like keystone x.l. of course pipelines break and planes crash to. talk about missing the point bro of

course i don't agree with building new pipelines as a fix to the situation i'm talking about accountability from these massive oil corporations to keep their existing pipeline safe and secure not to deliberately cut corners which kills people moving on to facebook i even george yet says this in response to my piece on margaret thatcher you don't know issues about economics and actually bad economics is the cause of much bigger every day war on people the nikkei janelle murder of two persons somewhere on earth i've been let me just make one thing clear just because i disagree with margaret thatcher's economic policy doesn't mean i'm ignorant in economics it means that i share a different opinion than you can on facebook erica gandara quote give it a rest you're never going to get the people responsible for martin luther king's death it's like beating a dead horse so let's let dr king rest in peace already eric let me get this straight you're saying that we shouldn't talk about the government being implicated in the murder of the greatest civil rights activists are of time because it would

be beating a dead horse well that's just absurd my friend on you tube brad a sixty four van why do you cut people off you interview when you're an internet based new show that never runs out of time i mean why can you do proper interviews two plus hours long brad we're not an interview internet show we're a television show hence the repeated static intro and commercial breaks of a very tight thirty minute slot to fill the time and try to pack as much information as possible at every show that being said this show gives way more time than cable networks do for guests so please give us a break and lastly on twitter sean sean from karachi pakistan says you have no idea what we're going through right now please make the american drones stop killing our children my deepest sympathy goes out to you and everyone in your country every day i do what i do with the hope that i can help stop this death and destruction please stay strong millions have your back that sick eyes love and peace and let's get on with the show. if you like what you see so far check us out on hulu dot com on the

sets there you can watch the latest episode of the show like mondays feature my interview with former congresswoman cynthia mckinney. every show. go favor us or do we. set to take a break from mike but stay tuned to hear my interview with mark ames about the media coverage of boston next. into the only military mechanisms to do that work to bring justice or accountability. i have every right to know what my government's doing you want to know why i pay taxes. i would characterize them as a charismatic version of american exceptionalism. is the state run english speaking russian channel it's kind of like.

russia today has an extremely confrontational stance when it comes to us. to. achieve anything. the facts have yet to emerge about what happened in boston on monday that hasn't stopped the train and for our news media from speculating and misreporting information first we are told a saudi national is being held suspect which was quickly retracted then yesterday there were widespread reports that a new suspect had been arrested turned out to be false as well the media coverage

in the last few days is exemplified what's wrong with the racing to report mentality in fact u.s. journalism professor green muller said it best she said quote i fear we have permanently entered the age of the retraction of the lessons of the past failed to inform the present the rush to be first has so firmly swallowed up the principle of being right all earlier i sat down with mark senior editor of an s f w corp and i asked him if the media has to source rule is good enough in reporting on breaking news and here's what he had to say you know i thought about that it in the past that rule has generally worked better let's say that than other rules but the real problem here is that you can it is a lack of accountability so you can say well i had two sources but if you if the way you got the sources or if your sources were bad and we have no idea of knowing who those sources were we have no idea looking into how they actually collected

that information and there's no accountability no one's fired no one you know takes a pay cut or anything then ultimately it doesn't matter so the real problem here i think is not to sources not just ours but a lack of accountability if there's no accountability you're not going to worry as much about who your two sources are going to worry more about the pressure you're getting to come up with the name or clues or or whatever right in that competition with the other media outlets who can get it further and you can report it better and better exactly you know it seems like the media another side of this is that they're already shaping the narrative to fit an al qaeda muslim extremist attack i mean by reporting these false hoods what damage does this do by planting the seed in the. populus that it is the work of a muslim extremist by the reports of you know the saudi national one and these dark skinned people being arrested. yeah the new york post was running and hasn't as far as i know apologized that it was a saudi national you know steve emerson of course but this guy has a history going way back to the early ninety's of just flat out lying. so

you know this is again the lack of accountability and they put out. this sort of incitement to mob violence against darker skinned or muslims or perceived muslims and arabs. and it's essentially just it's an insight incitement to riot there was no. you know there was no sort of. and it wasn't an attempt to say look we're not sure we don't know you know this could be dangerous to say this or whatever they just they they let themselves go on again and the problem is a lack of accountability what they don't get punished nobody's getting punished the media outlets are not getting punished. you know i wonder if their ratings are even hurting i mean they may be thinking that if we don't even come up with the rumors our ratings are going or are going to suffer people should should organize a boycott against this or punish them somehow but without punishment it's you know

we're stuck with the same crap the media did create in same problems over and over and it could lend facts to why the majority of people and some sort of fox news watchers and also i think a lot of other people who just watch the corporate press and general still think that saddam was like nine eleven still think there are w m d's in iraq still think that the anthrax attacks were betrayed by muslim extremist because we don't have this kind of accountability we don't have people coming and saying you know we were wrong this was damaging to the discourse damaging to our credibility and we're sorry and we don't see that mark in the media or political is out of print which could be. reason why we're seeing so much people understanding and promoting this false information but mark we already know that the media and government will exploit the boston event for their own agenda once the facts do come out once they do relay facts about whatever whoever the perpetrator is how we still have believed them. well again yeah that's that's another problem i mean i think people's trust

in the media has. understandably for a lot of understand what reasons gone downhill but your peers and other thing i would say as well though you know with the internet there's been a huge rise of sort of media critics and citizen journalists and so on and and we can now break through all kinds of people can sort of break through the previous stranglehold that the mainstream corporate media had over you know how we how information was disseminated and yet even though even with the rise of the internet and the rise of the sort of power myth of a lot of the alternative media journalism has gone hugely downhill i mean i would not say journalism today is better than journalism was in the seventy's or eighty's and i wouldn't say it's having a better effect on checking power than it did in the seventy's. some at some point in the eighty's it conked out but and so i think that's a really important question too to try to answer why is it with. with so much

more sort of decentralized. media and a lot more watch dogs and a lot more media critics today why is why has that not had a positive effect on the media why is the media gone downhill at the same time that everyone's watching it and criticizing it well i think i think all these alternative media outlets and also citizen journalists are trying to fill the gap that the giant void left by the failure and lack of transparency from the government and the media and there's so much distrust festered especially in the last decade or so people are handling question and then the problem is all these assertions that are way too early to say and it kind of dilutes the discourse and injecting all of these false theories and speculations inside this guy before that anything has even come out i mean let's wait till the facts of murder at least what they're saying the facts are before we can really pick it apart and counter it but mark let's talk about. about something else that you've been vocal about i mean the

boston tragedy is coming off the heels of all these mass killings yesterday the senate blocked a plan to expand background checks for gun buyers you've called gun control legislation the worst kind of politics why. i'm called obama's. political approach is the worst of all sort of approaches to government station the reason is this i mean i did i did a book on going so called going postal rampage massacres which exploded in this country sort of out of nowhere first and post offices whether called going postal where workers shoot their fellow workers and then themselves usually and then it went into the school yard and this started in the mid late one nine hundred eighty s. went to the pride of place and then schools and announced just a feature of life here that didn't exist before. and what i found is actually a fairly obvious correlation between the explosion of inequality in this country and the rise of these of these shootings and just as you know inner city violence.

in the sixty's you know had a social and economic cause which was poverty and racism and the shootings also have a cause. and we all sort of recognize that inequality has exploded the reason now the reason why i said this is. the worst of all of all possibilities or all legislation because obama. is proposing to cut social security and medicare under obama inequality has gotten even worse so what you're doing is actually you're you're using gun legislation as a sort of culture war diversion from the real underlying problem which is all the guard to control in this country oligarchy power all of our you control and growing inequality which is just accelerating when you when you try to legislate you know just taking away guns while sitting. the way people search security and their and

their medicare and when they're already suffering where you do if you piss people off even more you're not you're not creating a kinder culture you're not creating a better culture and that the democrats are playing the same game that the republicans are so the republicans will play in the fear game and the democrats will play on the. you know look how crazy the republicans are not. fighting like husker and divide and conquer and i like to call this a status and both democrats republicans response when i couldn't agree more i mean putting a band-aid on something that's a new much deeper rooted issue is what we really should be addressing. i was mark am senior editor or as a court. in the wake of tragedy in this country there tends to be some dialogue about u.s. policies and if there should be change moving forward of course after the newtown shooting we open

a conversation about gun legislation for some about mental health but the policies talked about in the wake of tragedy are only as logical in fact sometimes they're downright outlandish case in point are the latest comments from texas republican congressman louie gohmert because according to good old louis the policy we should all be talking about in the aftermath of the boston bombings is immigration yes of course in a recent c.-span interview gohmert said his first thought and his mind after seeing a bomb go off in boston was israel he said quote and after israel had to suffer the slings and arrows in the deaths in the may means finally the israeli people said you know what enough it built over seventy percent of it just a fence and the rest is the wall prevent snipers from knocking off their kids and they finally stop domestic violence from people that wanted to destroy them yeah that makes perfect sense even though we have no idea whatsoever who the perpetrators of the bombings are let's shift the blame to all the mexicans and

build ourselves a heavy duty fence to keep all those dangerous as an excited the country but it would be foolish to assume someone this ridiculous would only be up in arms over latinos according to this congressman when you pay attention to the ones coming in . here for yourself. we know al qaeda has camps over with the drug cartels on the other side of the make border we know that people are now being trained to come in and act like a spanish when there are radical islam as we know these things are happening and we just. in saying not to protect ourselves to make sure that people come in and as most people do they want the freedoms we have yet it always comes back to islamic militants don't it apparently al-qaeda has camps and the drug cartels in mexico stand considering i have never actually seen one fact backing up that absurd claim keep in mind he said all of this within two days of the attack frankly i find it

disgusting that he would capitalize on the boston tragedy to promote an anti immigration agenda now it's times like these when i wonder how these kind of congressmen were ever elected by the people what does it say about this country when bigoted xenophobe islamophobia are paid to represent us and pass bills in our name so thank you congressman louie gohmert for example find why a radical overhaul of the political system is desperately needed so if he's the villain then who is the hero when the chaos that's ensued since monday it's important that we highlight the quick response from so many good samaritans and paramedics and first responders to marathon runners who ran all the way to the hospital to get blood and the people of boston who opened their doors offering food water and shelter to total strangers despite the her vent many heroes that day deserve recognition however today i want to highlight just one. carlos arredondo

a peace activist who happened to be at the boston marathon and within moments of the bombing the ramp or the disaster zone to help those who were injured carlos the story goes back much deeper though you see the reason he was there at all was because he was supporting friends in the national guard who were running on or carlos's son one fallen soldier who died in iraq almost ten years ago and another who he lost to suicide since the untimely death of both of his sons carlos has become one of the most vocal peace activists in the country often carrying a makeshift coffin to symbolize his son. it's great to see other media outlets like people magazine highlighting carlos for putting himself in harm's way to help save lives like this from people magazine which displays carlos' ushering one of the victims out of the scene while seemingly pinching shut an artery from one of the victim's mangled legs so today call us out on bond though for your dedication to

peace and love for humanity you're not only boston's hero you're my hero too you know carlos is deed reminds us to not only lead with our words but with our actions so get up get out and do something inspiring. a clear image of iraq story a little twenty day taxi trip through the country.

the road to. your evidence from north to south that's. the root of iraqi tragedy. after the war waiting for peace. talks e r t. sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else. and realized everything is. welcome to the big picture. please technology innovation called.